Tag: interpersonal skills

Handling Difficult Conversations

While you may never have to fire anyone, there are all sorts of conversations that you can have with a fellow employee that are going to be awkward and difficult for the both of you. It doesn’t have to be that way…provided that you ask the right questions. Scott Miller at the Bleacher Report has a depressing story […]

The Project Manager’s “No Swerve Zone”

Projects can have a lot of moving parts and a lot of people making decisions that impact those moving parts. People come with their own set of parts, including their personalities, their productivity and their ability to work well with others in a team environment. Some of these complications are just the way things are, […]

Making “Rules of Thumb” Decisions

We all have our own “rules of thumb” or heuristics that we use to make business, project and even personal decisions. Funny how using those rules can result in making poor decisions, isn’t it? Over the years, I have found that decision-making always comes with an “it depends” clause and an optional “do nothing” clause. […]

Project Leadership According to the PMBOK® Guide

A project manager’s goal is to meet the objectives . . . on target, on time, on budget . . . of their projects. The PMBOK® Guide describes three characteristics of an effective project manager—knowledge, performance, and personal. Knowledge refers specifically to knowledge about project management. For example, can the project manager develop a project […]

Effective Communication: Query and Clarify

I had an interesting experience recently that got me thinking and refining my approach to effective communication. We all know that communication is a two-way street where the involved parties adopt the sender-receiver model in order to share information back and forth. Everyone is aware that active listening involves paying attention to what the other […]